Tishpak was the city-god of Eshnunna, in the Diyala valley east of the Tigris; his chief cult-city was Eshnunna itself, and he displaced the older god Ninazu as patron of that center. He was a warrior, in the family of Ninurta and the storm-gods; the Sumerian myth of Labbu — preserved in fragmentary form on a Neo-Assyrian tablet — describes a great sea-monster, the Labbu, sent by Enlil to ravage the land, and Tishpak's commission by the gods to destroy it. The text breaks off before the climax.
Before thisShedu
Next on the wallThe Kudurru Deities
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Tishpak is among the more obscure city-gods of Mesopotamia, principally because Eshnunna's political importance was eclipsed at an early date. The Labbu myth (CT 13.33-34) is one of several lesser monster-slaying narratives that supplement the major Marduk-Tiamat and Ninurta-Asakku stories; its very fragmentariness is a useful reminder that we have only a fraction of the mythological literature originally produced. Tishpak's cult survived into the Old Babylonian period, when it shows on seals and in personal names, but did not long outlast the political fall of Eshnunna.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Rival ofNinazuhe displaced the older god Ninazu as patron of that center
Companion ofNinurtaHe was a warrior, in the family of Ninurta and the storm-gods
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for Akkad, Babylon and Assyria. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 3400–3000 BCE
- Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
- c. 2900–2350 BCE
- Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
- c. 2334–2154 BCE
- The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
- c. 2112–2004 BCE
- Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
- c. 2000–1600 BCE
- Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
- c. 1650–1200 BCE
- Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
- c. 1400–1190 BCE
- The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
- c. 1000–612 BCE
- Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.